Let's take a look at recent claims about blood clots and Covid vaccines. Mike Adams’ flawed analysis of a clot sent by embalmer Richard Hirschman doesn’t demonstrate any link between blood clots and COVID-19 vaccines https://healthfeedback.org/claimrev...lood-clots-and-covid-19-vaccines-epoch-times/ CLAIM: Embalmers find “strange clots” in corpses since the implementation of COVID-19 vaccines SOURCE: Mike Adams, Richard Hirschman, Natural News, The Epoch Times, 2 Sep. 2022 DETAILS Inadequate support: The article provided no evidence demonstrating a link between the presence of unusual blood clots in deceased people and COVID-19 vaccines. Misleading: The laboratory analysis of blood clots has critical methodological flaws, including a sample size of one and the inadequate use of a blood sample as a control. These issues invalidate the results from the analysis and the conclusions drawn from them. KEY TAKE AWAY The Oxford-AstraZeneca and the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines have been associated with very rare cases of blood clots with low platelets, a condition known as vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia. However, COVID-19 itself is much more likely to increase the risk of blood clots, particularly in patients with moderate and severe COVID-19. Furthermore, recent research indicates that this risk might remain elevated for up to six months following infection. COVID-19 vaccines are currently the best tool to prevent COVID-19-associated blood clots, as well as other cardiovascular complications. FULL CLAIM: “[E]mbalmers across the country have been observing many large, and sometimes very long, ‘fibrous’ and rubbery clots inside the corpses they treat”; “clots are lacking key elements present in healthy human blood [...] suggesting that they are formed from something other than blood” REVIEW On 2 September 2022, The Epoch Times published an article claiming that embalmers in the U.S. have been finding “strange clots” in deceased people since the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. The article received more than 25,000 interactions on Facebook and Twitter, according to the social media analytics tool CrowdTangle. Most of the engagement on Twitter came from a single tweet by a member of the European Parliament Cristian Tehres. The claim received much greater publicity as other websites repeated the claims made in the Epoch Times article, such as Daily Caller, Gateway Pundit, and The Western Journal. Based on the social media listening tool Buzzsumo, these three articles received over 40,000 interactions across various social media platforms. The article on Epoch Times rehashed a claim that circulated widely in early 2022 and was mostly based on a testimonial from embalmer Richard Hirschman. Hirschman claimed to have found abnormal long white fibrous clots in corpses, which he attributed to COVID-19 vaccines. The fact-checking organization PolitiFact, which evaluated the claim at that time, found that such an association was unsupported by scientific evidence. However, the Epoch Times article once again put Hirschman’s unsupported claim front and center, without acknowledging any challenges to the claim. The article further suggested that the clots were somehow unnatural. This claim is equally unsubstantiated, as we will explain below. COVID-19 increases the risk of blood clots much more than the COVID-19 vaccines do Blood clotting is a natural process that prevents excessive bleeding and repairs the blood vessels when an injury occurs. Occasionally, abnormal blood clots can form inside veins or arteries in the absence of any injury. These clots are dangerous because they restrict blood flow within the arteries, leading to strokes and heart attacks, or within the veins, causing deep vein thrombosis (DVT). This last type of clot, which generally forms in the legs, may detach from its origin, travel through the body, and reach the lungs causing pulmonary embolism. Hirschman told the Epoch Times that 50 to 70% of the bodies he saw had white, long, fibrous “structures” that he had never seen before, which he “suspected” were caused by COVID-19 vaccines. However, there is no evidence other than Hirschman’s assertions to support such an association. Furthermore, the vaccination status “isn’t on the death certificate”, as Hari P. Close, national president of the National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association, explained to PolitiFact. Therefore, Hirschman’s observations alone don’t demonstrate that such clots appear predominantly in vaccinated people. Irene Sansano, an anatomical pathology specialist at the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital in Barcelona, Spain, said in an email to Health Feedback that the clots found by Hirschman “don’t look different” from the ones they regularly find in blood clot autopsies at the hospital. She also explained that thromboembolisms (circulating blood clots) are frequent among deceased people and are mainly caused by “obesity, sedentarism, smoking, and now COVID-19”. [Read Sansano’s comment in full below] The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that there are 900,000 DVT and pulmonary embolism cases in the U.S. each year, causing up to 100,000 deaths. Since the early stages of the pandemic, researchers have observed that severe COVID-19 increased the risk of blood clots[1], and more recent research shows that this risk is also increased in patients with moderate COVID-19[2]. As of 9 September 2022, COVID-19 has caused more than one million deaths in the U.S. If the incidence of blood clots has increased in the U.S. as Hirschman claimed, COVID-19 itself could be responsible for a large part of it. While the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines have been associated with cases of blood clots with low levels of platelets, such cases are very rare. Moreover, the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine isn’t authorized in the U.S., and the rate of blood clots following vaccination with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is four cases per one million doses. Such a low rate cannot explain the large increase in clots that Hirschman reported. Finally, one of the reasons that Hirschman gave for suspecting that COVID-19 vaccines caused blood clotting was an increased presence of clots during the summer of 2021, when “COVID-19 deaths were on the decline”. However, COVID-19 might also explain this effect. In 2022, researchers in Sweden published a study involving more than one million people who were infected with SARS-CoV-2 between February 2020 and 25 May 2021. The study found that the risk of developing DVT, pulmonary embolism, and bleeding remained elevated for up to six months following infection[3]. The laboratory analysis of blood clots has critical methodological issues that make it impossible to draw any meaningful conclusion Hirschman attributed the alleged unusual clots he found in corpses to a change in the characteristics of the blood. “The blood is different. Something is causing the blood to change,” he told the Epoch Times. To support this alleged “change”, the article cited the results of a laboratory analysis that compared one of the clots sent by Hirschman with a blood sample from an unvaccinated person. The laboratory analyzed the samples using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). This technique measures the concentration of certain elements present in a sample by transforming them into ions, which are then separated based on their mass and charge. However, several issues with this analysis make the results and their interpretation unreliable. First, the laboratory in question is owned by columnist Mike Adams, founder of the website Natural News, where the results of the analysis were published. This website previously published false claims about COVID-19 vaccines, including claims that the vaccines cause cancer and that they would lead to a “vaccine holocaust”. Media Bias/Fact Check describes Natural News as a Conspiracy-Pseudoscience source and “one of the most discredited sources on the internet”. In fact, several platforms, including Facebook, Google, and YouTube, removed the website for violating the platforms’ rules or for routinely publishing misinformation. Second, Adams claimed that the clots might be formed “from something other than blood” because his analysis showed they lacked certain elements “present in healthy human blood” (i.e., the blood from the unvaccinated person), such as iron, potassium, magnesium, and zinc. For example, Adams’ article on Natural News specified that the “post-vaccine clot sample only contains 4.4% of the iron that would be seen in human blood. This alone is confirmation that this clot is not a ‘blood clot’”. Adams went even further by suggesting without evidence that the clots might be “self-assembling dead biostructures”. However, the composition of a clot can vary significantly based on where the clot forms[4]. Blood is made of plasma, red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets. Red cells, which account for 40 to 45% of the blood’s volume, contain hemoglobin, an iron-rich protein that is essential for carrying oxygen from the lungs to the tissues. Arterial clots contain few red blood cells and are formed mainly by fibrin and platelets, whereas venous clots have a higher red blood cell content (see Figure 1). However, the amount of time that has passed since clot formation also influences clot composition, as clots tend to accumulate more fibrin with time. In other words, Adams’ report that the clot he analyzed is low in iron in no way establishes that the clot is unnatural, as he claimed. There are multiple factors influencing clot composition, as we explained above, and a clot that is low in iron can be explained by other factors, such as where it was formed. But Adams and others who repeated the claim didn’t account for these other factors. Figure 1. Proportions of different structures within arterial and venous thrombi, as well as pulmonary emboli, as a function of the total volume. RBC: red blood cell. Polyhedrocytes and echinocytes are red blood cells with atypical shapes. Image source[4]. Furthermore, clots in the heart and large blood vessels can also form after death[5]. Thirdly, Adams acknowledged that the accreditation of his lab “does not specifically encompass human biological samples”, meaning that the laboratory may not be equipped to handle human samples. In fact, Adams stated that he conducted the analysis using the same protocol they regularly use for testing “dog food and cat food samples which are, of course, composed of animal flesh and ground blood vessels, meat tissue, cartilage and other animal-derived biological structures”. Needless to say, human samples aren’t the same as dog and cat food. Therefore, the reliability of Adams’ results and conclusions is questionable. Finally, the analysis lacked the most basic clinical information about the individuals from whom the samples were taken. The analysis’ sample size of just one clot and one blood sample means that the results cannot be generalized to the broader population. The article repeats previously debunked claims The Epoch Times stated that it’s unknown if the cause of the alleged new clots is “COVID-19, vaccines, both, or something different”. However, it kept presenting COVID-19 vaccines as the number one suspect throughout the entire article. It did so by sharing anecdotal evidence from a few other embalmers and opinions from gynecologist James Thorp and physician Sherri Tenpenny. Both of them spread false claims about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines in the past, as Health Feedback documented in earlier reviews. In the Epoch Times article, Thorp and Tenpenny claimed that the toxic effect of the spike protein induced by COVID-19 vaccines might mediate the formation of blood clots. Thorp further claimed that the vaccination causes protein misfolding that can also lead to neurodegenerative diseases, such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. But these claims are unsupported and contradict current scientific evidence. Health Feedback explained in an earlier review that the small quantities of spike protein produced after vaccination haven’t been shown to cause any harm to the body. At the moment, there is no evidence suggesting that the spike protein induced by vaccination causes blood clotting. As Health Feedback explained in this earlier review, there is evidence that the spike protein from the virus might damage blood vessels, but no study has so far reported harmful effects from the spike protein produced after vaccination. The rare cases of blood clotting associated with the Johnson & Johnson and the Oxford–AstraZeneca vaccine are thought to happen through a different mechanism. As Health Feedback and others also explained, no evidence suggests that the spike protein produced after COVID-19 vaccination causes or increases the risk of neurodegenerative disorders, contrary to Thorp’s claim. Conclusion The article in the Epoch Times claimed that “strange clots” have been found in people who have recently died in the U.S. The article presented a series of testimonials, laboratory analyses, and opinions from medical doctors that convey the overall message that these clots are associated with COVID-19 vaccines. However, the claim is based on anecdotal evidence and flawed experiments that don’t support such an association. COVID-19 itself is much more likely to cause blood clots than the vaccines, which remain an effective strategy to prevent severe COVID-19 and the cardiovascular complications associated with it. SCIENTISTS’ FEEDBACK Irene Sansano, Anatomical pathologist, Vall d'Hebron University Hospital, Barcelona: Thromboembolisms (circulating blood clots) are frequent, and their primary causes are obesity, sedentarism, smoking, and now COVID-19. At the hospital, we regularly conduct autopsies for blood clots and they don’t look different [from the ones found by Hirschman], although I haven’t analyzed them. REFERENCES 1 – Wichmann et al. (2020) Autopsy Findings and Venous Thromboembolism in Patients With COVID-19: A Prospective Cohort Study. Annals of Internal Medicine. 2 – Douillet et al. (2021) Risk of symptomatic venous thromboembolism in mild and moderate COVID-19: A comparison of two prospective European cohorts. Thrombosis Research. 3 – Katsoularis et al. (2022) Risks of deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, and bleeding after covid-19: nationwide self-controlled cases series and matched cohort study. BMJ. 4 – Chernysh et al. (2020) The distinctive structure and composition of arterial and venous thrombi and pulmonary emboli. Scientific Reports. 5 – Jackowski et al. (2006) Postmortem imaging of blood and its characteristics using MSCT and MRI. International Journal of Legal Medicine.
Let's fact check other nonsense floating around on social media this week. FACT CHECK: Did Robert Kennedy Jr. Win A Supreme Court Case Declaring COVID-19 Vaccines Were Not Vaccines? https://checkyourfact.com/2022/09/07/fact-check-robert-kennedy-jr-vaccines/ A post shared on Facebook claims anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. was part of a Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case that declared COVID-19 vaccines were “not vaccines.” Verdict: False There is no evidence that Kennedy Jr. was part of such a case on the vaccine. Fact Check: Kennedy Jr. is a well-known anti-vaccine activist who has campaigned against COVID-19 vaccines, according to The New York Times. His non-profit, the Children’s Health Defense, was removed from Instagram and Facebook in August for spreading medical misinformation after originally being suspended for 30 days, the outlet reported. The Facebook post claims Kennedy Jr. was part of a winning coalition in a case regarding the COVID-19 vaccine presented to SCOTUS. “In the ruling, the Supreme Court confirms that the damage caused by Covid mRNA gene therapies is irreparable,” the Facebook post reads in part, adding that “Covid vaccines are not vaccines.” The claim is baseless. A search through the Supreme Court’s recent opinions showed no case regarding the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine or about its contents. Check Your Fact also looked through the Supreme Court’s docket and found no cases regarding the vaccine’s status. There are no credible news reports suggesting Kennedy Jr. has won any SCOTUS case or is planning to bring an argument against the COVID-19 vaccine forward. (RELATED: Did Pfizer Create A COVID-19 Vaccine ‘Vaporizer Cartridge’?) SCOTUS did rule against a rule implemented by President Joe Biden’s administration in January that large businesses with over 100 employees must mandate vaccines for all workers or be tested once a week, according to Stanford Law School’s Blog. The rule for healthcare workers at federally funded facilities, however, was upheld, the blog read. Check Your Fact debunked a claim that the Supreme Court canceled universal vaccination last year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) state that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective.
Viral post about UK vaccine program for kids is false https://www.aap.com.au/factcheck/viral-post-about-uk-vaccine-program-for-kids-is-false/
Fact check: No, masks do not make people more obedient and 'slave like' https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...e-people-more-obedient-slave-like/8026835001/ The claim: Masks make people more obedient and "slave like' Health officials have touted the benefits of mask-wearing since COVID-19 swept across the country. But more than two years after the virus was declared a pandemic, misinformation about masks continues to circulate on social media. A Sept. 5 Facebook post by Jason Christoff, a Canadian health coach, added to that swirl of misinformation, contending that masks make people more "slave like" and obedient. The post garnered over 250 shares. In the post, Christoff said masks trigger the nervous system to make wearers subservient. "Blocking your own airway is an internal trigger for the body to increase obedience and compliance to the highest levels," he wrote. "You would never block your own airways unless you were in clear and present danger." The claim is baseless, though. Medical experts said there is no physiological mechanism for face masks to cause people to become more "slave like" or obedient. In addition, masks do not cause oxygen deprivation or neurological damage. They are safe to wear for the majority of people, experts said. USA TODAY reached out to Christoff for comment. Evidence does not support a connection between wearing masks and obedience Medical experts dispute the claim that masks cause a nervous system reaction and make people more compliant. "Wearing a mask does not cause people to become 'slave like' and obedient," Andrew Luks, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington, told USA TODAY in an email. "It's nonsense." Masks also do not lower blood oxygen levels or increase carbon dioxide in the blood, Luks said. Daniel DeCaro, an associate psychology professor at the University of Louisville who studies autonomy and conformity, agreed. "The idea that simply wearing a mask would trigger the nervous system to become 'slave like' and 'obedient' is clearly not based on reputable science and is false," he said. Fact check: Experts say face masks don't cause oxygen deprivation, neurological damage As USA TODAY and other news outlets have previously reported, face masks are generally safe to wear and effective at mitigating the spread of COVID-19, although specific guidance on usage varies depending on community risk levels and a person's health condition. Both the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control say mask-wearing can reduce COVID-19 spread when used properly. “The bottom line is masks work for preventing the spread for many respiratory illnesses and have played a vital role in protecting people during the pandemic," Luks said. Our rating: False Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that masks make people more obedient and "slave like." There is no physiological mechanism that would cause someone wearing a mask to become more obedient or "slave like," medical experts said. Masks do not cause oxygen deprivation or neurological damage and are safe for the majority of people to wear. Our fact-check sources: Andrew Luks, Sept. 8. Phone interview with USA TODAY. Daniel DeCaro, Sept. 9. Email interview with USA TODAY. USA TODAY, Oct. 17, 2021. Fact check: Experts say face masks don't cause oxygen deprivation, neurological damage Cleveland Clinic, Sept. 7. Hypoxemia Loyola Medicine, Sept. 7. Do facemasks restrict airflow? Food and Drug Administration, accessed Sept. 16. Face Masks, Barrier Face Coverings, Surgical Masks, and Respirators for COVID-19 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, accessed Sept. 16. Use and Care of Masks
Yeah -- all that nonsense pushed about Covid vaccine efficacy in Canada on social media based on an online article from Gateway Pundit. Yep -- it's all complete bullshiat with fake data from anti-vax con-artist Steve Kirsch. Article misleads on Covid-19 vaccine efficacy in Canada https://factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com.32JW8RN An online article claims more vaccinated than unvaccinated people are hospitalized with Covid-19 in Canada. But the piece relies on figures that do not match long-term nationwide and provincial data, which Health Canada says indicate the shots are effective at preventing severe illness, hospitalization and death. "Study Prepared for the Liberal Party of Canada Finds Covid-19 Vaccines Not 100% Effective; 6 Times More Vaccinated People are in ICU and 5 Times More are Hospitalized," says the headline of a September 19, 2022 article from the Gateway Pundit, a website that has previously spread health misinformation. The article was republished on multiple websites and shared on Instagram, Twitter and Gab. It circulated amid debate over Ottawa's Covid-19 vaccine requirement for people entering Canada, a policy that will be dropped on October 1. The piece bases its claims on a document published online by Steve Kirsch, a US entrepreneur who has pushed unproven drugs to treat Covid-19. Kirsch claims the document was prepared for the Liberal Party of Canada but has redacted the identity of the researcher who prepared the report and anonymized the identity of the editors said to have reviewed the data. Asked about the report, the Liberal Party of Canada told AFP it is not associated with the document. "This was not commissioned by the Liberal Party of Canada, and we have no knowledge of the study," said Parker Lund, the party's director of communication. Additionally, data highlighted by the Gateway Pundit do not match what public health officials in Canada have reported. Unvaccinated more at risk of hospitalization The claim that Canada is seeing more vaccinated patients in hospitals and intensive care units is based on a chart purported to show data from a single week, updated June 3, 2022 in the province of Ontario. Public Health Ontario (PHO) said in a September 21 email: "The report circulating online is not aligned with PHO's reporting and surveillance data." The agency pointed to the province's most recent report on confirmed cases of Covid-19 following vaccination, which covers the period of December 14, 2020 to September 11, 2022. "The rate of Covid-19-related hospitalizations was higher among unvaccinated individuals compared to those who have completed their primary vaccine series, as well as those that have completed their primary vaccine series and received their first booster dose or second booster dose," the report says. Both PHO and Health Canada said looking at long-term data is necessary to understand vaccine effectiveness on severe illness and death. In a statement emailed September 26, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) said nationwide data from June 2021 to June 2022 showed "the risk of ICU admission among unvaccinated individuals across all age groups ranged from 3 to 67 times higher than those vaccinated with a completed primary series, and 4 to 21 times higher than those vaccinated with a primary series and one or more additional dose(s)." During the same period, PHAC found "the risk of death among unvaccinated individuals across all age groups ranged from 3 to 24 times higher than those vaccinated with a completed primary series, and 6 to 14 times higher than those vaccinated with a primary series and one or more additional dose(s)." Vaccines effective for all ages Like Health Canada, the World Health Organization (WHO) says the Covid-19 vaccines are "highly effective against serious illness, hospitalization and death," while noting that "no vaccine is 100 percent effective." Some people who are vaccinated will get infected and may fall ill. Given that 82 percent of Canadians have received a primary vaccine series, it is misleading to directly compare the total number of severe Covid-19 cases in vaccinated people to the total number of cases in unvaccinated people. The Gateway Pundit article claims Covid-19 vaccines have done little to change outcomes for individuals under the age of 60. But PHAC refuted this, pointing to data from May 9 and June 5, 2022. "Among those aged 12-59 years, unvaccinated individuals who got Covid-19 were two times more likely to die from their illness than individuals vaccinated with a primary series, and three times more likely to die from their illness than those who received one or more additional doses after their primary series," the agency said. PHAC added that Canadian epidemiological data "show that individuals of all ages who were fully vaccinated and fully vaccinated with an additional dose, and who were diagnosed with Covid-19 were significantly protected from severe outcomes." Health Canada is monitoring the Covid-19 vaccine for rare serious adverse events but continues to recommend the jab to all eligible Canadians. "The benefits of all Covid-19 vaccines continue to outweigh the risks of the disease," the department says. AFP has fact-checked other inaccurate claims about vaccines here.
Let's fact check the nonsense the MAGA Covid-deniers are pushing about Hurricane Ian and Covid mandates. So... let's see... the government tricked people who opposed Covid mandates into moving to Florida so the government could engineer a large storm to wipe them all out. That's some fine projection there -- I assume DeSantis is part of the federal conspiracy because he put in place lax pandemic policies to convince people to move to Florida. Fact check: Baseless conspiracy theory about Hurricane Ian, COVID-19 pandemic circulates https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...-conspiracy-theory-spreads-online/8168529001/ The claim: The government engineered Hurricane Ian as part of a pandemic-related scheme Hurricane Ian barreled into Florida’s Gulf Coast where it wreaked havoc on homes and businesses before advancing to South Carolina. Some social media users are circulating a conspiracy theory that this wasn't a natural phenomenon. “The ‘storm of the century’ as it is being called is unfortunately another one of many examples of how the government engineers weather to completely destroy places and as always they will use predictive programming to show you they're going to do it in advance,” reads part of a Sept. 29 Instagram post's caption. The post claims the government tricked people who were opposed to pandemic-related mandates into moving to Florida amid the COVID-19 pandemic so that they could then be devastated by Hurricane Ian. "Sure seems like it all just a set up now!" reads text included in the post. "That's how Satan works. He is the ultimate deceiver." The post garnered over 500 likes in less than a week. But the claim is baseless. Weather experts told USA TODAY it is not possible for anyone to engineer a storm. Hurricane Ian has no relationship to the pandemic, either. USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the claim for comment. Hurricane Ian was not a 'set up' No one has the ability to create a storm, especially not a tropical cyclone on the scale of Hurricane Ian, according to Jase Bernhardt, a hurricane preparedness researcher at Hofstra University. Charles Konrad, the director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southeast Regional Climate Center, agreed. “A hurricane has just an incredible amount of energy connected with it," said Konrad. "It’s equivalent to like a 10-megaton nuclear bomb that goes off every 20 minutes. And that's just a typical hurricane, and of course Ian was a very strong hurricane. There's no way that you could bring that much energy in.” Furthermore, several atmospheric and marine conditions must be met for a tropical cyclone to form, Maria Torres, a National Hurricane Center spokesperson, told USA TODAY in an email. A cyclone starts after a pre-existing disturbance of showers and thunderstorms grows in time over a warm open ocean. Fact check: Biden's comment about hurricane preparedness, vaccination predates Hurricane Ian "If the winds in the mid-levels of the atmosphere are low, the disturbance can strengthen and develop into an organized area of low pressures with winds greater than 40 mph," Torres said. "As winds increase up to 74 mph and the center becomes more defined, this is when the storm is classified as a hurricane." Bernhardt said that Hurricane Ian initially began as a cluster of thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean, strengthened over the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea, became a hurricane near Cuba and reached peak intensity over the warm Gulf of Mexico waters just before striking Florida. PolitiFact also debunked this claim. USA TODAY has debunked other claims related to Hurricane Ian, including baseless assertions that President Joe Biden advised people to get vaccinated in preparation for hurricane season on Sept. 27 and that an image shows Daytona International Speedway flooded by Hurricane Ian. Our rating: False Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that the government engineered Hurricane Ian as part of a pandemic-related scheme. Experts said it is not possible for anyone to engineer a storm, especially at the scale of Hurricane Ian. There are several atmospheric and marine conditions that must be met for a hurricane to form. Our fact-check sources: PolitiFact, Sept. 30, Hurricane Ian was a natural disaster, not a political conspiracy to devastate Floridians USA TODAY, Oct. 3, Ian's death toll climbs to 68; record flooding possible in Virginia; 600K without power in Florida: Live updates Charles Konrad, Oct. 3, Phone interview with USA TODAY Jase Bernhardt, Oct. 3, Email exchange with USA TODAY New York Times, Sept. 30, How Hurricane Ian Became So Powerful Maria Torres, Oct. 3, Email exchange with USA TODAY USA TODAY, Sept. 27, Hurricane Ian nears Florida threatening storm surge. Graphics explain the deadly weather event. USA TODAY, Sept. 30, Fact check: Biden's comment about hurricane preparedness, vaccination predates Hurricane Ian USA TODAY, Feb. 4, 2021, What is QAnon? What to know about the baseless, far-right conspiracy theory connected to Marjorie Taylor Greene USA TODAY, Oct. 3, Fact check: Image shows Daytona speedway after heavy rain in 2009, not after Hurricane Ian USA TODAY, April 28, 2021, Fact check: False QAnon-related conspiracy theory claims Arizona ballots are secretly watermarked USA TODAY, April 20, Fact check: False claim that Putin rescued 35,000 imprisoned Ukrainian children
Yeah.... every week we see new fabricated claims that an athlete's health problems were due to the Covid vaccine --- many even turn out to be unvaccinated. Here is the latest false claim. Fact check: JJ Watt's heart problem not because of COVID vaccine https://www.houstonchronicle.com/te...e/fact-check-jj-watt-heart-covid-17490818.php